


Madness by Moonlight

by LightningEyed



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-05-08 21:06:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14702313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightningEyed/pseuds/LightningEyed
Summary: Selanna Fair-hand is a native of Morthal who fled her home many years ago, persecuted for her study of daedra, and returned among the condemned for the very same. Teraeiliz is a Dunmer wizard who came upon unfortunate circumstances after fleeing Morrowind. They could not be more different in the paths they choose to follow, yet the blood of dragons flows in both of their veins, drawing them together, time after time.





	1. Fate Unsealed

**Author's Note:**

> Gods, I haven't written a fic in forever. I'll keep this short. Two things:  
> 1\. This is a passion project. That means it's unlikely to be updated regularly. Please bear that in mind.  
> 2\. I am no expert on Elder Scrolls lore. I started writing this about 150 hours into playing Skyrim for the first time ever. If I get something wrong, feel free to correct me.  
> That said, enjoy!

The raider cradled his broken wrist, spitting curses beneath his breath in the Dunmer tongue. The woman at his side, though a spar of bone was protruding from her arm, made no such complaint. Her eyes, though blind, were wild.

“Go,” she laughed, in a voice that stroked the edge of Oblivion itself. “I have looked upon Apocrypha. You must have your time. Mine, I have had.”

With a last concerned glance that the woman did not see, he slipped into the shadows and was gone. She collapsed to the ground, laughing, but as the wildness faded from her eyes, her laughs turned into sobs of pain and fear. Her broken arm was beneath her; she shifted so that it was not, but it still sent spikes of agony up her shoulder.

The bootfalls grew louder and louder, and a group of legionaries found her soon. She knew it was them from the sound of their boots. Imperial Legion boots sounded almost mechanical, even when they weren’t marching in formation.

“Blind and broken,” said one of them, and she felt the heat of his torch on her face. “Just like they said she’d be.”

“Give her something for the pain and get her out,” ordered their acting commander. “In chains, mind you. I don’t care if she pleads insanity. I don’t care if she pleads her belly again. She is going to the block. She’s a Nord, yes? Send her with that traitor Ulfric.”

The youngest of the legionaries, the fish of the group, wrapped her protruding bone in cloths.

“Send me to Oblivion and I will take you there with me,” she said, ever-so-softly. None of them understood her, of course. It was not the common speech she used, nor Nordic, nor even Dovahzuul. Nor was it the dialect of the dremora. It was an ancient precursor, a language remembered only by cultists and Elder dragons. Some said it was the language in which the Elder Scrolls were scribed, but though she was blind, she was no Moth Priest.

The woman had been tried in Cyrodiil, years before, at the age of sixteen. Barely a woman, she had discovered a book which had imparted her with this knowledge, and more. Knowledge that no man should know.

Selanna Fair-hand, whether or not the other rumors were true, was the champion of Hermaeus Mora.

The cohort’s medic set her bone, washed it with alcohol, and wrapped it up once again, without undoing her chains. Her robes were stripped from her by one of the female soldiers, and the sensation of magicka peeling away from her skin left her feeling naked.

But they could not take away the mark beneath her eye, the mark of Apocrypha itself. The mark gave her sight although she was blind, a sight unlike any other.

“You’re going home for the last time,” said the medic, as he helped the others muscle her into the cart. Then, when he clearly thought she could not hear him, he murmured, “May the Eight save us all.”

“Two crazy Nords with one stone,” the female officer agreed. “This had better be the end of this Stormcloak business. As for this Daedra business, well… seems you can never quite squash that out.”

Selanna, overhearing, allowed herself half a smile.

“Home,” she mused, fixing her blind eyes on the man tied up across from her. They called him the Bear of Markarth, she’d heard. He shifted, though not noticeably to anyone else. She finished her sentiment in the Elder speech once again. “To home and to bed, to sleep forever.”

After a while, with a few others gathered beside them, Selanna’s eyes drifted shut. She woke to the captain’s proclamation: “We’re getting close.” A shame, that. She had hoped to speak with the others on the journey. To learn their histories, to perhaps turn their minds.

Yet she found that when she focused on them, though her eyes were filmy, they all flinched. That was something, at least. They were afraid of her, of what she could do. Most Nords thought women belonged in the kitchen or the market or sweeping floors. But this woman, this woman as pale as the moonlight from her lips to her eyes to her callused feet, set them darting backwards. Perhaps it was the way her blind gaze found them despite its disability. Perhaps it was the way she held her hands, ready to cast at the slightest threat. Perhaps it was simply the mark that scarred her face, clearly daedric in origin, even if no one could place it.

From the wagon, they all stepped. The Imperial fortress loomed over them, over the little town. The men sharing the cart with her were checked off a list as they climbed from the cart.

“She isn’t on the list,” the soldier who had been keeping it reported, confused.

“We didn’t have time to send word,” said the centurion who had found her. “But she is guilty all the same. This is Selanna Fair-hand, leader of the cult of Hermaeus Mora. The last time we had her in our grasp, she escaped after claiming she was with child. Even if she is now, we will not make the same mistake.”

Selanna’s mouth twitched into a slight smirk, and the centurion flinched.

“Does she speak?” wondered the soldier.

“When I want to,” she said in flawless Cyrodilic, startling both the centurion and the soldier. The only words the centurion had heard from her were ramblings in the Elder Tongue.

“A shame you didn’t put those talents to better use.”

“Better use? Centurion, I am the champion of the god of knowledge, the master of fate. Whatever you suggest is a better use, I likely disagree.”

She turned from them and strode freely towards the chopping block.

“And I suppose you think your daedric master will save you.”

“If he wills,” Selanna said. “And if he does not, I know at least that I have served him well. I will have a place in Apocrypha, the realm of knowledge. Perhaps I will become a Seeker.”

“May the Eight save your soul,” the soldier said, sadly shaking his head.

“Nine,” Selanna corrected, more to push the soldier’s buttons than because she venerated Talos.

The prisoners were led to the block one by one, Selanna third among them.

She remembered little of what truly happened then. She bowed and waited for the axe, and was not sure if it ever came. Later accounts would say that Ulfric Stormcloak had been the one with his head on the block when the dragon came, and those accounts were right, for by all that was right, Selanna Fair-hand was already dead then.

Screams were silenced that day; the guards of the Empire routed and the strikeforce sent by the Stormcloaks retreating quickly. Both groups had called out to the survivors, hoping for another hand on their side. But Selanna was not a survivor, not until a formless being lifted her head where it had fallen and put it back onto its shoulders, murmuring a long-forgotten ritual in a language older than time itself. Amongst the burning rubble of Helgen, Selanna Fair-hand stirred to watch a great black dragon soaring away overhead.

_Your fate is sealed, champion. Leave behind your epithet, for by it you may be remembered. I will not speak to you, not directly, for some time. My friends and foes amongst the daedra may. What you do for them, I will remember. But your fate is far more than being a champion of Oblivion._

“What do you mean?”

_You, of course, do not remember your father, much less his father. You will learn, in time, of your fate. Live, champion. Live, Selanna._

She stood from her place, dizzy, and wandered. The gates hung open, charred and ruined. The light was bright against her eyes. Though she had been blinded by looking into Apocrypha, she could see once again, but when she caught her reflection in the blade of a broken sword, she saw that her eyes appeared just as they had before. And the mark of Oblivion on her face had changed—or been changed—for the battle-paint of a mage of old Winterhold. She smirked at that. A mage of Winterhold, indeed. She raised a hand, trying to summon forth the ghostly bow she used, but it would not come to her for some reason.

 _That is my price,_ Hermaeus Mora whispered to her. _The knowledge of your magic was what was required to give you life from death. You will find it anew, I am sure, and more beyond it._

“That is fair,” she said, but she could not keep the bitter tone from her voice. She had once had Seekers and dremora at her command. She had called the bow, and sometimes a dagger. She had made the dead walk by her will, and with such delicacy that their bodies were not destroyed.

Now, she opened a hand and summoned fire, only a small bit. Even as little as it was, the fire was taxing to maintain. Frustrated, she put her hand down. Likely, it would not be enough to defend her against more than a few wolves.

“How am I supposed to look out for myself?” she wondered, but Hermaeus Mora had gone. Sighing, she glanced over the destroyed town, and dragged out a few corpses, taking a set of mostly intact Imperial Legion lorica and a poorly-made sword. It was no mage’s robe, but it would at least protect her until she could find more. On a whim, she searched the rest of the town for valuables, and found almost nothing, as she had expected. Still, there was enough gold to buy food for a few days, and maybe rent a room, and some of the fallen townsfolk wore jewelry. Riverwood was not so far away. She vaguely remembered the little village. She had hidden there for a few weeks on her way south. The innkeeper had been strange, but more than willing to help her keep out of sight. Perhaps she would be willing to do the same now.

Selanna wandered down the road, taking her time. She paused at the trio of standing stones by the bend in the road, and silently placed a hand on the one marked with the constellation of the Mage. Even if it did nothing to restore her knowledge of the spells that linked her to Oblivion, the feeling of magicka pulsing beneath her fingers was reassuring, and she took a few long minutes to let it go.

The sun dipped beneath the horizon as she continued on, and she heard the snarls of wolves in the brush beside her. She had once had to rely on her hearing to know of such things, but she found them even more quickly with her sight. Brandishing the sword sloppily in one hand, and summoning flames from the other, she beat the pair of them back. It had been a long time since she had fought anything up close; she was well-winded. Still, the fire came more easily now. She tucked the sword away at her side. The gates of Riverwood loomed up before her, eerily silent; no guards patrolled its streets, and everything was locked tight except the inn. She stepped inside, glancing around warily, but except for a young bard, an old drunk, and the barman and innkeeper, no one else was there. She absently handed the bard a few gold septims, requesting a long song that few knew. Surprisingly, he did, and she sat and listened, smiling. When he was done, he glanced at her, and, a little uneasily, commented, “That’s quite the wound, soldier.”

“Wound?” she wondered, not recalling having one.

“At the base of your neck,” he said, and her hands went beneath the collar of the lorica. Surely enough, barely peeking out through the collar in the front, there was a line of scabbing, not yet fully healed.

“Yes,” she said absently. “With all that’s happened, I had nearly forgotten. You heard there was a dragon up at Helgen, I’m sure?”

He nodded. “You were there?”

“I was lucky,” she said. “I was unconscious. I guess it thought I was dead, and left me be.”

“And the wound? The dragon left that?”

She shook her head. “We were supposed to be executing a load of Stormcloaks. This was their doing. A townsman must have slipped one a hand-axe. Nearly took off my head. I’m on my way to Solitude, to be reassigned, but I’ve been jumped by wolves already once tonight.” She stood slightly. “I could use a good bottle of mead and a warm bed. Sometimes it’s worth spending my meager funds. Thank you for the song, bard.”

“Sven,” he introduced himself.

“Selanna,” she returned, and approached the bar. The barman provided her with a choice of several bottles of mead; she chose one absentmindedly and arranged for a room. The innkeeper led her to the one on the right, where she had stayed before, and shut the door behind the pair of them.

“You aren’t a legionary,” she said, assessing Selanna with eyes that knew more than they suggested. “I remember you. You’re a fugitive. You fled through here four years ago. That story you told Sven, though… How much of that was true?”

“The dragon. The skirmish between the legionaries at Helgen Keep and the Stormcloaks they were supposed to be executing. The scar wasn’t from a Stormcloak’s axe. It was from the headsman’s. As far as the Legion is concerned, I am dead, and I doubt they’ll be going back in to check.”

“How do you get a scar like that and live?” the innkeeper wondered, horrified.

“When you’ve sold your soul to Oblivion? It isn’t up to natural laws whether I live or die.”

The innkeeper shuddered. “And what about the dragon? What did you see of it?”

Selanna tilted her head and laid a finger on her cheek. “Nothing. I gave my sight as a price for my knowledge. My master shows me only what he wants to show me.”

“Right,” the innkeeper murmured, disappointedly. “Alright, then, what did you hear of it?”

“Screaming,” Selanna described. “The sound of a newfound rage. And beneath it all, each time he swooped down on us, there was what seemed like words, words that translated into what he was doing. I suppose that is where the Way of the Voice comes from.”

“You heard it speaking Dovahzuul? What did it say?”

“I can’t remember. It made sense in the moment, but I lost a lot of knowledge when I was brought back to life. Even so, I doubt I could provide an accurate translation.”

The innkeeper frowned. “It seems to me that the Jarl of Whiterun would want to know about this, at any rate. Maybe his court wizard. If you have nowhere else to go, perhaps there would be a start.”

“Right now,” Selanna said, giving the innkeeper as withering a glance as she dared, “I would like to get some sleep. This dragon is still out there. I’m sure I’ll learn more about it, and so will you.”

With a sigh, the innkeeper retreated, closing the door gently behind her, leaving Selanna in the dark, and the daedric priestess was gone before the innkeeper even woke the next morning.


	2. The Echo of Voices

The watchtower was already burned to rubble on one side, the guards fleeing from it in a chorus of shouts. Selanna glanced up at the sky, the dark elf and another cluster of guards at her back, bows at the ready. She was armed with only a few more spells than she had been, but the feather-light ghostly sword in her right hand felt much more familiar than the iron one she had sold to the blacksmith, and the flames in her left crackled reassuringly.

“It’s still here!” one of the fleeing guards shouted, and Selanna, without thinking, charged up the stairs, readying a firebolt as she went. The dragon swooped over her, bellowing a cone of flame, which she barely managed to dodge as she hurled her own. Its wing jerked back, and it gave a wounded bellow, and Selanna kept on with the bolts of fire. Her sword dissipated briefly, and she let it go. She wouldn’t need it until the dragon got close enough to hit.

It tumbled to the ground, wounded, and she leapt down a staircase in excitement, twisting an ankle. Without wasting time, though, she picked her leg up and ran, calling the sword back to her as she went, charged the dragon, and ran the ghostly sword through it. Alongside the guards and the dark elf, she slashed until the thing fell over, dead, and, exhausted, dispelled the sword, dropping to a knee to relieve the weight on her ankle. It soon faded, though, in comparison with the burning sensation that spread through her body. She had felt something almost like this before, when being granted knowledge from Apocrypha, but this time it was different. It was younger, but vaster, as though she was being granted a life experience. She saw Skyrim from a dizzying height, felt wind beneath wings and the rumble in her chest as she released a roar that knocked another dragon from the sky—

_Another_ dragon? She understood suddenly—this was the dragon’s knowledge. She opened her eyes and forced herself to her feet, and gaped at the sight before her. Certainly since her sight had been given back, she had marveled in it often, but the dragon was simply… gone. Gone, except for its bones and scales and a few embers and ashes, and the things it had been carrying. A hefty chunk of septims, and a few gems, and… she shuddered… the armor and weapons of a few guards it had killed.

“Are you alright?” one of the guards wondered, rushing up to her. “What _was_ that, that you just did?”

“She must be Dragonborn.” The dark elf glanced at Selanna. “What do you know of the Dragonborn, mage?”

“Warriors with dragon blood,” Selanna recited absently, gazing at her own hands in disbelief. “Because of this, they could absorb the souls of dragons. I may be a mage, but I am still a Nord, and a scholar. I am not ignorant of old legends.”

“Then you know of the Thu’um, as well.”

Selanna scanned the ground, dropping a fallen soldier’s sword where no one stood before her. The words were there, distant in her memory, but they had been starting to resurface ever since she had wandered into an ancient ruin, searching for a tablet for the insufferable court wizard, who couldn’t be bothered to get it himself. At least the journey had been worth something to her, now. She had never tried it in practice, but she knew the theory. She recalled the sensation of the dragon soul within her, of the memories of it calling out to its foe, and paired it with one of the many words she had found etched on that wall…

“ _Fus!_ ”

The sword was blown backwards by an invisible wall; not far, only a few feet, but _fus_ was only one word, after all. Selanna took a deep breath; the projection had taken more work than she had expected, but perhaps that would change in time.

“By the Eight,” one of the guards breathed.

“It’s logical, isn’t it?” Selanna wondered, still a little out of breath. “The Dragonborn disappeared because the dragons did. There was no dragon blood to carry on, and there was no need. Now the dragons return, and so do the Dragonborn.”

“Are there others?” the dark elf wondered.

“Do you think I would know that? I didn’t even know _I_ was Dragonborn until about three minutes ago.”

“I suppose.” She frowned, then waved all the remaining guards to gather. “We should get back to town. The sun is going down. If there are more dragons, I have no desire to stand out here and wait for them. Besides, the jarl will want to hear about this.”

They didn’t make it all the way back to the jarl before a voice broke across the sky. Selanna was not sure what the others heard, but she heard the voice in Nordic and Dovahzuul and the Elder Tongue all at once. It reminded her of the way Hermaeus Mora had spoken to her, but it was not him. It was a presence more distant, and perhaps not his equal in power, and divided. The Greybeards, monks of the Way of the Voice. Their legends, too, Selanna had heard, and now they wanted to speak to her. Or, perhaps, they wanted to speak to any and all Dragonborn. Selanna could only hope there were others. This Dragonborn business couldn’t be her priority.

Still, she had nowhere else to go, and so she took her leave of Whiterun despite being named its thane, and set out towards High Hrothgar on foot, having traded armor for mages’ robes at last, and armed with a small assortment of new spells.

The journey was long and harsh, and she dared not pause along the way, if only for fear that either the Imperial legionaries or the Stormcloak rebels patrolling their camps and forts would recognize her.

As she made her way farther east, though, farther from Morthal where she had been born and raised, she was barely spared a passing glance. She finally stopped for the night in the inn in Ivarstead, at the foot of the Seven Thousand Steps. She would need strength for that journey, so she paused another few days, cleaning up an ancient tomb said to be haunted and a few nearby bandit camps, working in the sawmill, and giving what she hoped was solace to the local madman.

Then she began the journey, pausing only to speak to other pilgrims and defend herself against wild beasts. At its end, the great hall of High Hrothgar stood before her. The front doors looked as though they had not been used in years, save one, which was perhaps opened to receive supplies. An altar beneath the steps was littered with things left by pilgrims, and she stooped to leave a small bowl of frost salts beside them before entering through the one used door.

Heads turned to face her as she entered.

“A woman,” one of them said in slight surprise, in the Elder Tongue.

“My gender does not change my blood,” Selanna said in plain Nordic, then as an afterthought, added, “Master.”

“A _cocky_ woman,” he amended under his breath.

“Peace, Wulfgar,” said one of the others, approaching Selanna. “You are the Dragonborn we seek? Prove to us that you are not an impostor. Let us taste of your Voice.”

The way he emphasized it led Selanna to believe that he was not speaking of her usual, conversational voice. She turned her head towards Wulfgar, breathed deeply, and projected that one same Dovahzuul word at him: “ _Fus_!”

He stumbled backwards, and as he caught himself on one of the statues decorating the stairs, amended his statement further. “A _very_ cocky woman.”

“What is your name, Dragonborn?” wondered the other who had spoken, not wasting his time silencing Wulfgar.

“Selanna,” she answered, leaving off her family epithet as Hermaeus Mora had directed.

“Selanna Fair-hand, of Morthal,” the Greybeard completed knowingly. “I am Arngeir.”

“How do you…”

“You can see a long way from High Hrothgar,” Arngeir said, with no indication that he was joking. “I know of your deeds and misdeeds, Dragonborn. Hopefully, the responsibility that your dragon blood carries with it will take precedence over your loyalty to the daedra when it matters most.”

Selanna stared at him sullenly. “I can make no promises, Master Arngeir. My soul is bound to Oblivion, and more than that, to Apocrypha.”

“Do you know the tale of Miraak, Dragonborn?”

She did not answer with her words, but the expression on her face told him that she did, and that she knew what he meant by bringing it up.

“We will teach you the second word of Unrelenting Force,” Arngeir said. “But I cannot allow myself to teach you the third until I know you will not misuse it.”


End file.
